United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has associated the global response to government mass surveillance with the collective uproar that eventually helped cripple South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Pillay, the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights and a South
Africa native, said in an interview aired on Thursday that just
as international pressure helped end apartheid in her home
country, so must widespread condemnation of intrusive spying help
boost online privacy rights. Pillay was the first non-white woman
to serve as a High Court judge in South Africa.

"Combined and collective action by everybody can end serious
violations of human rights,” she said in an interview with
BBC Radio 4. “That experience inspires me to go on and
address the issue of internet [privacy], which right now is
extremely troubling because the revelations of surveillance have
implications for human rights...People are really afraid that all
their personal details are being used in violation of traditional
national protections."

Pillay is tasked with preparing a report for the UN on digital
privacy protections following the cascade of revelations supplied
by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
regarding the American spy agency’s global surveillance
apparatus.

The South Africa native has defended electronic freedoms in the
past, both before and after Snowden’s leaks were unveiled in
June.

“The broad scope of national security surveillance regimes in
countries including the United States and the United Kingdom, and
the impact of these regimes on individuals’ right to privacy and
other human rights, continues to raise concern,” Pillay said
during a speech to the UN Human Rights Council in September.
“Laws and policies must be adopted to address the potential
for dramatic intrusion on individuals’ privacy which have been
made possible by modern communications technology…”

In February 2012, she denounced restrictions on internet access
and the wanton detention of bloggers while insisting that
governments which monitor criminal activity online must not abuse
such power against activists.

"Bloggers and human rights defenders who legitimately
exercise their right to freedom of expression continue to be
arbitrarily arrested, tortured and unjustly sentenced to
imprisonment on the pretext of protecting national security or
countering terrorism," Pillay said.

"[T]here is also a real concern that methods to identify and
track down criminals may be used to crack down on human rights
defenders, suppress dissenting voices and withhold 'inconvenient'
information,” she added.

In December 2010, following Wikileaks’ publishing of thousands of
classified US documents supplied by US Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning,
Pillay defended the whistleblower website against tactics used by
the US government and others to pressure third parties against
facilitating Wikileaks’ operations.

"I am concerned about reports of pressure exerted on private
companies including banks, credit card companies and Internet
service providers to close down credit lines for donations to
WikiLeaks, as well as to stop hosting the website," she said
in Geneva.

"If WikiLeaks has committed any recognizable illegal act then
this should be handled through the legal system, and not through
pressure and intimidation including on third parties,"
Pillay added.

Pillay, also a former international criminal court judge, told
the BBC that her experience with grave human rights abuses -
including her service during the Rwanda genocide trial - does not
taint or devalue her views of online protections.

"I don't grade human rights," she told Berners-Lee, who
was guest editing BBC Radio 4's ‘Today’ program. "I
feel I have to look after and promote the rights of all persons.
I'm not put off by the lifetime experience of violations I have
seen."

Last week, the UN General Assembly unanimously approved
a resolution spurred by NSA targets Brazil and Germany, which
stated "the same rights that people have offline must also be
protected online, including the right to privacy.”

It implores the UN member states "to review their procedures,
practices and legislation regarding the surveillance of
communications, their interception and collection of personal
data, with a view to upholding the right to privacy of all their
obligations under international human rights law.”

The resolution is also the impetus for Pillay’s forthcoming
report on internet privacy "in the context of domestic and
extraterritorial surveillance...including on a mass scale.”

She said on BBC that it was "very important that governments
now want to discuss the matters of mass surveillance and right to
privacy in a serious way.”